Doyle After Death (14 page)

The giant digital girl tried hard, but she couldn't keep my attention. I was scanning the street, focused on finding Marissa. She was supposedly somewhere on Fremont. Strange place to hide, under a ceiling blazing with the glamoring, the clamoring of the collective unconscious. But then again, maybe that was protective coloration for Marissa.

I'd already checked her apartment. She'd moved out, left no forwarding.

Marissa Fetzer was the one who'd stolen Lenny Wong's client list; she was the prostitute who wanted to be a madam, and she'd recruited four girls to leave Lenny and work for her. Potentially, she'd cut a big slice out of his business. She'd supposedly stolen about ten grand from his office safe, too. Some women get sick of the “escort” business's creep factor—­of being stuck between two kinds of creep. The sick and tired escort can just leave town, accept being a topless waitress in some franchised dive in some other burg—­or she can steal money and the client list.

More than the money, what pissed Lenny off was the client list and the four girls. It was one of his girls suddenly becoming competition. That's showing no respect. Lenny figures you just can't let a bitch do that.

I knew Lenny from all the way back to high school. Half-­Chinese guy, mostly a suburban stoner looking for the easy way. His older brother got twelve years for dealing drugs, so after working for a shady used-­car lot, Lenny went into running a string of girls instead. I run into him the morning after he finds she absconded with his cash and his client list
.
“
You're a detective?
” he says. “
I was just shopping for a fucking detective. You always was a trustworthy fucker. I gave you money to get me weed, you got me the weed. You want the gig?
”

Man, I sure needed a gig. I was living in a dump, a crappy apartment building where gambling addicts were forever hiding from the landlord. The blinking casino sign was perpetually flashing from next door, always strobe-­flashing in my window:

T
HE
P
AY
B
IGGER
C
ASINO

Owners had no clue about the irony in that sign.

Barely a casino, the Pay Bigger: just a musty two-­story bar with tired waitresses in sexy outfits, a lot of chattering slot machines, a few meth dealers doing their own chattering, and a handful of shabby card tables.

You gambled one more time, and you lost—­

There he was, Bull Moore. He was coming out of the Golden Nugget casino, with that hollow, lost look in his eyes that gamblers had after a bad run. Moore might have something for me. He kept his paranoid ears open . . .

“Hey Bull,” I said, strolling up to him. “What's up? You look like you're thinking of going back to pro wrestling.”

Moore glared at me and stuck his hands in his coat pockets. “I have a
radio show
, Fogg. No time for wrestling. You should know that. You're a professional snoop working for whoever pays you. Might be anyone, too. You could be working for the feds.”

“I'd love to get a job from the feds. I hear they pay good money. Recommend me to them sometime.” But I wanted him to help me so I said, “You know what, I caught your last podcast. Good stuff. I was just thinking you might need a stake.” His radio show was just a podcast thing and it made no money. He self-­published conspiracy books and
they
made no money. I cocked my head, narrowed my eyes, pretending to look him over. “You look like a guy who wants a re-­buy in a poker tournament.”

Moore frowned. “A stake? How much and for what?”

“Um . . . sixty bucks, Bull.
If
you have some good solid idea about how I might locate Marissa Fetzer.” Wong had given me three hundred bucks in advance for expenses. I was to get two thousand for finding Marissa. Whom I'd met more than once . . . Both times I'd paid, but we'd only had sex one of the times. Second time she blew the mood by starting to talk about her kid, so I paid her and said we'd just pretend we did it.

Moore glanced nervously around. “I think I know where she is. She was talking to . . .” He looked coldly at me. “ . . . to someone. About referrals to her business. I tried to warn her not to talk to him. He could be a federal agent. She don't listen to me.”

“
Who
could be a federal agent?”

Moore shook his head. “Two hundred dollars.”

I shook mine back at him. “Eighty.”

“One eighty.”

“One . . . twenty. Last offer. But it better be solid.”

“One hundred twenty?” He chewed his lower lip, thinking about how he'd win back his money in the casino.

Only, he would probably lose the hundred twenty. But I didn't point that out.

He nodded and stuck out his hand. I led him into the doorway of a closed Vegas souvenir shop, and gave him half the money. “Now tell me who she was talking to, and where, and you get the other half. And if it's not solid, you get nothing more from me
ever
and I'll slam your online radio show to anyone who'll listen.”

I wasn't about to use
physical
threats on the ex pro wrestler.

He frowned over the money, and said, “It was Wax. She was talking to him about client referrals. Him getting kickbacks, stuff like that. About an hour ago in the bar of the Chatterbox. She's kinda using a booth for an office right now. Probably still there. It's solid.”

I handed him the other sixty and he tried to warn me about how Wax might be a federal agent, and I pretended to listen as I put my wallet away and got my bearings. So—­the Chatterbox Hotel and Lounge. It was down the next side street, just a right and a maybe as many steps as I'd given dollars to Bull Moore.

“Okay, Bull, I'll keep that in mind . . .”

Then I was striding off toward the Chatterbox.

Clutches of tourists, mostly drunk college students, staggered by me, laughing. A licensed blond prostitute in a hot-­pink short-­short skirt tried to catch my eye, smiling. I waved back and kept on.

There was the sign for the hotel made out of sequencing, glowing lightbulbs. They'd replaced some bulbs. It actually
said
Chatterbox now.

I went in and saw her immediately. Hardly anyone in the hotel lounge. She was sitting in the corner back booth of the bar, talking on her smart phone, cupping her hand to shield the phone from the noise of the bar's slot machines.

I walked directly to her burgundy-­leather booth, thinking that everydamnplace had slot machines in Nevada. They were in gas stations, restaurant lobbies, convenience stores—­even in the airport. They'd probably put them in nursery schools pretty soon. But wasn't that what
Chuck E. Cheese
was, a casino for kids?

“I don't care, Wax said yes, so we're going to be busy,” she was saying, as I walked up. Marissa was about thirty, short black hair spiked up, large hazel eyes, dark red lipstick, onyx fingernail polish spangled with silver glitter; she wore a woman's business suit with a short skirt.

She was nervous, quick in her movements. She looked up at me but kept talking. “Okay. Just make sure you're careful about who you give your money to.”

“Mind if I sit?” I asked. She didn't say no, so I sat down.

“Right. Just do it. Call you in ten.” She put the phone down, still looking at its screen for text as she went on, “I'm not working at that anymore but I got two girls who're not busy.”

After a moment, I realized she was talking to me. “I heard you had four girls. But that's not what I'm here for, Marissa.”

She glanced up at me. “Don't I remember that you were a customer?”

“Yeah.” It wasn't something I was proud of. What was that line from Paul Simon?
There were times when I was so lonesome I took some comfort there.
“But not tonight. I'm on a job.” I looked around at the lounge. It had mirrored walls decoratively scored with black. Red velvet along the edge of the bar. “You take ten grand off a guy, you take his Rolodex, and four girls, and
this
is where you hide out?”

“I didn't put up any signs outside. And I
didn't
take his money. I am not saying if I took his client list.” She looked at me like she thought I was a dweeb as she said, “No one uses a Rolodex anymore.”

“You know what I mean. His client list. If you didn't take his money, who did?”

“Konyo, his security. His security. You know? The Tongan guy. Konyo has the safe combination. Konyo would've heard from the girls who stayed that I talked the other girls into going with me.”

“And he figured that'd be cover for him taking the money? If you took the girls he could say you took the money, too?” I thought about it. “You might be right. He seemed like a dirtbag to me.”

“You're so much better? Working for Wong?”

“Lenny's not so bad.”

“You think you know him, because you went to high school with him. But you don't. How much is he paying you?”

“Doesn't matter.”

She signaled to the bartender. And I realized she wasn't signaling for a drink.

Uh-­oh.
Better wrap this up.

“Okay, if you didn't take the money, come back with me to Lenny. Tell him you didn't take it, and maybe make some kinda deal to make up for the Rolo . . . for the client file.”

She shook her head, laughing soundlessly. “You remember Clarice?”

“Black girl with a blond wig? White eyeliner?”

“That's the girl. She skimmed some money off transactions and she disappeared. Konyo was being all swag about how he took her on a trip to check out the scenic countryside.”

The scenic countryside.
Meaning the desert outside Las Vegas, where lots of bodies were buried.

I had to think of something else. “How about if . . .”

A big brown hand clapped down hard on the back of my neck. I could see it in the mirrored wall across from us. I could see whose hand it was. Wax, owner of the hotel. Drug dealer, sideline in hot cars. He was an oversized Latino guy with a big paunch but real muscles to go with his yellow muscle shirt. His hair was cut Pachuco style. Liked to wax his classic cars every day.

“Hi Wax,” I said. “You get that 'sixty-­two Corvette?”

“Don't fucking call me no familiar name like that,” he said. “I don't know you.”

“We did meet once or twice.”

“I said I don't know you. Now get the fuck up.”

As it happened, he didn't wait for me to stand up, he plain dragged me out of my seat by the neck, and bum-­rushed me to the back door, where the bartender was waiting with a pool cue. I only got one shot from the pool cue in the gut before the bartender opened the back door and Wax heaved me headfirst into the alley.

I was suddenly intimate with a pile of empty cardboard boxes.

The door slammed behind me. I turned on my back, hoping to get out before someone stomped me.

But they didn't bother. They just left me there on some flattened boxes, in an alley that smelled like piss.

I was feeling pretty humiliated. Not just because I was ejected from the bar, like a bum. But also because they didn't
bother
to kick my ass. They didn't bother to kill me. They didn't even take my cell phone.

My cell phone . . .

I got to my feet, sucking air through my teeth with the pain, and dug my cell phone out of my pocket. I called Lenny Wong, as I walked unsteadily down the alley to the street.

Some part of me was saying,
Don't do this. Find a better way.

But I was feeling low. Angry. And I didn't have a gun. One of the few guys in town without a gun, and me a private eye.

“Yeah, it's Lenny.”

“Lenny. Nick Fogg. Right now she's in the Chatterbox lounge just off Fremont.”

“I know the place. She working with Wax?”

“Something like that. I figure you could work things out with her. She's got a kid. She was just tired of it all. She says she didn't take your money. Says it was probably Konyo. I believe her.”

“Konyo?” Silence on the other end for six or seven seconds. “Wouldn't surprise me. I'll look into that. But she took a lot more money when she peeled off four of my girls and took my client list.”

“Don't go in there half cocked, man.”

“Oh I won't. She's probably going to leave the place right now. But I've got a guy can watch it for me . . .”

“Lenny, don't—­”

But he hung up. When I called back, there was no answer, and then I got a message that his voice mail was full.

My gut ached. I wondered if I should go to the ER. But instead I went to Jinky Jake's and got drunk. And about two in the morning, after Jake made me leave, I ran into Lucinda, who was Marissa's best friend at the “agency” that Lenny ran. She was getting into a cab, outside a casino hotel.

“Lucinda!”

She turned sharply, seeming a bit smashed herself, her red-­blond wig swinging slightly askew with the motion. She wore large white-­rimmed sunglasses at two in the morning, but out here under the neon they seemed to belong.

“Lucinda, you seen Marissa?”

“I don't know, last I knew she was in the motel across from mine. You wanta ride along? If you pay the cab?”

“Yeah.”

Pay the cab. Pay the fee. Pay Bigger.

I had a premonition that I shouldn't go with her . . .

“G
et out of here, now!” Ruby shouted.

She wasn't shouting at me. But she did wake me up.

I sat up in bed, momentarily disoriented. Las Vegas was gone and I was back in the Ossuary.

I was dead. But I wasn't. It was the afterworld. I'm dead, but then again I'm not.

“Shut up, bitch!” someone shouted. I thought I recognized that voice.